My first “spiritual” teacher arrived simultaneous to the literary discoveries. Anything but spiritual and much older, he drew me at nineteen into a long and difficult entanglement, a liaison lasting years that would, these days, set off all the #MeToo sirens. The sum of it was traumatizing, but there wereContinue Reading
Writing about fifteen years of practicing Universal Sufism gives me pause. For one, keeping personal matters personal–a tacit cultural feature of this region–seems polite and practical. Especially with spiritual matters, staying mum averts misunderstandings. Another reason I hesitate is that the essence of Sufism, an ancient form of mysticism, isContinue Reading
I Appalachian women are, arguably, the most unacknowledged and undervalued segment of our region. But . . . that fact wasn’t always so, particularly in the matriarchal Cherokee tribe, where lineage was matrilineal (meaning the descent was determined through the female line), and where women were completely independent. They couldContinue Reading
A few years ago, I visited the Coal Creek Miners Museum in Rocky Top (formerly Lake City, formerly Coal Creek), Anderson County, Tennessee. The facility provides a historical glimpse into the lives of coal miners in the Fraterville and Briceville mines, particularly from the late 1800s to the 1930s. TheContinue Reading
I have been out of the broom closet for a while now, as it were. Once in a while friends will reach out and enquire about my Pagan ways and practices. Yesterday I received a Facebook message from a good friend. She had read a news report about a womanContinue Reading
When someone reflects on Women’s suffrage in the United States, that person might recognize women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Alice Paul. Here in Appalachia, however, we had our own heroine who worked tirelessly for women’s rights and issues. This Women’s History Month, Appalachia BareContinue Reading
We’ve come to the third and final post in a series about the Extraordinary Tanner family (See posts one and two.). Today, we’ll meet the trailblazing, tenacious Tanner women, who were exceptionally intelligent and highly successful in a time when women, especially African American women, weren’t afforded serious education orContinue Reading
I’ve been friends with Ed McDaniel (aka Captain Ed) for over ten years. We met working in Facilities Services at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We are union members of United Campus Workers (UCW), which we both were privileged to serve as Local President. We’ve spent a fair amount ofContinue Reading
Welcome to Part 2 of our three-part series about the Extraordinary Tanners. Today’s post centers on Henry and Carlton Tanner, sons of Benjamin and Sarah Tanner. We’ll meet younger son, Carlton, first. Though he wasn’t technically born in Appalachia, his parents were, and his story is significant to present theContinue Reading
Our evening was cooler than expected. A quick but fierce thunderstorm moved through our late July afternoon that day, complete with loud rolling booms, cracks of lightning, and a torrent of falling water. On the northern Appalachian Trail, among the beech, maple, and birch-covered Green Mountains of Vermont, our campingContinue Reading